


Arsonist’s Lullabye

by ravenstrange



Series: Save Tonight [5]
Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Also Not Soft Johnny Silverhand, Callbacks to Past Chapters, Corps are Assholes, Destroying Kerry’s Art, Dialogue Heavy Chapters, Engram Jackie, Eventual sexy times, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Intermission Chapters for Other Characters, Johnny pov, Lore Building, Love Confessions, Minor Angst, Minor Miscommunication (Not Too Much), Original Character - Freeform, Small Conspiracy Theories Cause I Can’t Help Myself, Soft Johnny Silverhand, V’s POV in Chapter Titles, communication is key, interrupted confessions, some fluff and some angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-21 14:01:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30022872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenstrange/pseuds/ravenstrange
Summary: They made it through alive but soon a fragile balance of what they were to each other was struck, neither of them willing to cross the line to tip the scales. Things between them left unsaid as keeping their friendship had always just been more important.They spend six months apart before the balance begins to shift rapidly. A young woman comes into Afterlife begging V for help from an awfully familiar problem regarding a construct jacked into her head. After all, there are only two people in Night City who know what it’s like to have someone else stuck inside your head slowly killing you.The fact that the construct is Jackie only complicates matters more.
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand/Female V, Johnny Silverhand/V, Misty Olszewski & Jackie Welles
Series: Save Tonight [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2114709
Comments: 57
Kudos: 84





	1. ; the night we met

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I had all and then most of you  
>  Some and now none of you  
> Take me back to the night we met  
> I don't know what I'm supposed to do  
> Haunted by the ghost of you  
> Oh, take me back to the night we met_

It started like this.

Boy did a lot of really fucked up shit and then got flatlined. Boy woke up in girl’s head and tried to kill her. Boy and girl fought constantly until they started to work together than against each other. Both got into a lot of stupid antics, girl almost got herself killed multiple times, boy took her body over and got her a tattoo (and also got drunk off her/his ass). See, the boy was killing the girl just by being in her head, and he hated it. But boy wanted to do better and tried to prove it to girl over and over again.

Girl returned the favor by saying that she’d take a bullet for him, and they’d find a way out of this forever. Boy fell in love with girl, but never told her, never knew if girl knew. Boy got them to where they needed to be, girl got them proxies, and both got out of the situation alive.

Then, boy and girl started to drift apart. Boy still loved girl, but never said it, and never thought it was worth it to tell her. Girl came into her own, taking over a bar of a mutual friend who passed away due to boy’s recklessness. Boy found his old bandmate and ended up going on tour with him for six months.

Boy and girl kept in touch, still close friends, just growing more distant due to their busier lives. Soon, the conversations stopped.

Once the tour ended, boy returned to Night City, to figure out what would happen next. Girl continued her work as a fixer, too overworked to notice boy had returned.

That was how it started.

It’s not how it ended.

*******

Afterlife was still the neon disaster of a bar he had remembered it being, but there were slight differences now.

The music, for one, was older industrial rock that he knew V had a habit of listening to. Always listening to bands older than her while going on gigs, but it had become the signature. When the music was on, it was time to get down to business. He respected the rule, it was something he held for himself over the years. Walking into Afterlife with that blasting over the speakers, to him there was no mistaking who was in charge now.

The other thing that had changed was what was behind the bar. Rogue’s old collection of Samurai albums and photos remained but were moved to one shelf. Beneath that was a photo of Rogue, and her gun, a memorial to her.

The third thing that changed was that you could no longer order a Silverhand Special. It was completely off the menu, and while you could attempt to order it, it was only ever given to two people. In its place on the menu was the Welles Special.

When he sat down at the bar, in an angle where he could see her booth, Claire set down the Silverhand Special in front of him. One of two people allowed to order it: just him and the owner. No one questioned it, now that it was well known that he was alive and well. And when he wasn’t returning with the rebellious revolution that people expected him to have, attention on him faded out.

Six months on the road with Kerry brought back what he loved about music, though things changed in how he played. But six months he was itching to do something else, be somewhere else, be _with_ someone else. Kerry still had more shows to play, and so Johnny returned to Night City alone.

Afterlife was the very first place he went. No, he wasn’t going to read into the reasons why.

“She’s in,” Claire’s voice cut through his thoughts, “Want me to tell her you’re here?”

Johnny can see V in the booth from where he’s sitting. She’s arguing with a merc trying to one up her; he knows the look on her face, the one of calm disgust, is going to bite the kid in the ass in a few minutes. He looks to Claire and shakes his head, “Nah. No sense in botherin’ her, just here for a drink.”

The look he gets in response is a smirk, Claire just waving him off as she goes to help another patron. He lifts the glass to his lips as he drinks, and his eyes go back to V.

The kid who was arguing is backing out of the booth, and V has risen to her feet. She’s not a tall woman by any means, but what she doesn’t have in height, she makes up for in being intimidating in other ways. How she carries herself, her shoulders high, the glare in her eyes that shows she will flatline the kid for doing anything else wrong; the fear she used to strike in the hearts of everyone she passed when she was still a merc.

When he was still living in her head, amused by everyone’s reaction to his little merc with a heart of gold.

Kid takes the hint, bolts. It’s not immediate, but V drops the act quickly, her shoulders slump and her features change. Immediate show of exhaustion, he recognizes the signs. Maybe she hasn’t been sleeping or eating. Maybe she’s not taking care of herself like she claimed she had been in her messages to him months ago.

For a moment, he considers getting up from the bar and walking over. Bring her a drink, save her from herself, what he used to do before he went on tour.

But another person walks up to her booth, looking for an audience, and he thinks better of it. _Later._ He’ll get in touch with her later. Catch up, see how she’s been, if they’re able to make the time.

He finishes the drink, pays Claire and heads out of the bar.

“Listen, I need to… _shut up_ …sorry, I need to talk to---”

At the top of the stairs, a young woman’s voice is ringing out, begging to be let into the bar. Emmerick is standing at the entrance, arms crossed. “Not getting in, sorry kid.”

“Please! He says that… _I said I’m handling it!_ ” The woman’s voice hints she’s talking to someone else, but when Johnny makes it to the top of the stairs, she’s speaking to Emmerick alone. No one else is there.

But there’s something in how the woman speaks, in how she’s acting, that throws up warning signals. That remind him of a not-so-distant past, of V coming to Afterlife, begging to see Rogue at his insistence. That Rogue would help them, that she’d sort them straight, solve all their problems.

This woman had the same look on her face. V had told him, once she took over Afterlife, that she wanted to be different than Rogue. She wanted to be better somehow.

He crosses his arms, as Emmerick repeats, “Boss is busy, and I don’t know you. Come back when you have some cred.”

The young woman looks upset, she looks _desperate_ , as she grabs onto Emmericks’ arm. “Please!”

The bouncer starts to move to knock the girl’s lights out, but Johnny intervenes, putting his hand on his arm. “She here to see V?”

The woman’s eyes immediate dart over to look at him, as she backs away from Emmerick, “Yes! I was told she could help me, and I really need her help. _He_ says that she’ll help! I have no idea what I’m doing here and—”

Metal hand held up in the air, universal signal for _stop talking_ , “Don’t need your life story. Talk to Claire at the bar, she’ll set you up.” When Emmerick shoots him a look, he gives one back. “Just let the damn girl in, _fuck_ ,” as he steps to the side to let the young woman in. She runs past them and into the bar, and Johnny doesn’t stick around long enough to get an earful (or fist) from the bouncer.

He doesn’t return to Kerry’s house right away. Decides to stick around the city proper, walk around. He heads into Watson for a bit, into Kabuki Market for food and drink. Stocks up on ammo, ignores the fan or two who come up to talk to him. Without realizing it, he found himself wandering towards V’s old building in Watson.

He has to stop himself, mentally kick himself before he goes up the staircase, but it’s his holo going off that halts him all together.

He had seen her at Afterlife but seeing her call him now caused an uncomfortable lunge in his chest that never quite went away no matter how long he had heard from her. “V,” he greets, a smirk as he looks at the holo, and half expects her sarcastic grin back at him.

But it’s different. If she seemed tired from a distance, she really showed it now. “Johnny.” Her voice is clipped over the holo, and there is something he can tell she’s not saying. “Claire says you stopped by. You’re in the city?”

“Yeah. Didn’t want to bother you, seemed busy.”

“Listen, gonna need you to come back. Need to talk to you about somethin’, alright?” There is something in her tone. A hint of frustration, but a hint of _worry_ and that sets off more alarms than he wants to admit to.

“Sure,” he agrees quickly, already walking back in the direction of Afterlife, “Be there in 10. Somethin’ I need to be--”

But she cuts him off with a curt “thanks,” and hangs up.

It’s short work to find himself back in front of Afterlife, but Emmerick isn’t outside this time. When he walks in, the music is off, the bar is empty, and everyone is gone.

Everyone except V, who sits at the bar with a cigarette between her lips, putting it down when she hears him come in. She regards him with a half-smile before it fades into the heavy sigh she lets out.

Everything about this is setting off warnings, shooting up flags. The last time she looked at him like this, it was when they didn’t think the proxies were going to work out. When they thought they were both going to lose each other for good.

If she was about to tell him that same news, he wasn’t sure how he’d react.

“I’m here, what’s the problem?” His voice stayed even despite feeling like he was about to go off the deep end. Approaching V, it was then he realized there was someone sitting next to her.

V stood up and revealed the person who was next to her; the woman who was fighting to get into the bar when he left. She looks at the woman and then looks at Johnny. “Brynn, meet Johnny.”

Brynn waves awkwardly, “We met actually, he helped me get by the bouncer.”

V raises an eyebrow at her, “Did he. Well, did you tell him what you told me?”

“V, what is this? Poor girl looks like she—”

“Johnny, shut up and listen. _Please_ ,” and it’s the slight hint of desperation in V’s voice that gives him pause as he finally stands in front of the two of them, a bar stool to his right. V looks to Brynn, “Tell him what you told me.”

“Are you sure?” She looks to V for confirmation, and V nods.

“Yes.”

Brynn takes a deep breath, and he watches as her eyes dart to a spot behind the bar, but there’s no one there. There’s nothing there. But as she stares at the spot, she waits. Like she’s looking for confirmation from something else.

 _Fuck_ , he recognizes this, and when he looks to V, the look on her face shows his fears might be confirmed.

Brynn seems to get the confirmation she’s looking for and looks back to Johnny, “It’s a long story, but the short of it is…I have a construct in my head of this guy named Jackie who says _he_ knows V, and that maybe she can help; she’s the best damn merc he knows.”

He doesn’t react at first, but then he sits down on the bar stool near him, and picks up V’s cigarette, needing the drag. Behind Brynn, V moves to the bar, ducking under the partition to get behind it. She pulls out a bottle of tequila, and three shot glasses, pouring them all. She sets one in front of Brynn, one in front of Johnny, one in front of herself.

Both him and V share a look before downing their shots, but Brynn doesn’t touch it. She looks confused.

“Was it something I said?”


	2. ; questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And I got questions  
>  And you got answers  
> And I'm not sure if they're fact or fiction_

“Don’t worry about it, Brynn,” V says as she sets her shot glass down. “I can help, but there’s going be a cost to it.”

Johnny doesn’t hide his immediate dislike of the words coming out of V’s mouth, but lets the scene pay out. She tells Brynn what she needs to do, tells her to speak to Regina in Watson to get jobs lined up. Brynn nods quickly, she agrees to everything V says, because she wants her help.

It doesn’t sit right with him. He taps his fingers on the bar as Brynn gets up to go. “Be careful, Brynn,” V says after her, still standing behind the bar. “I have your contact info; I will be in touch tomorrow – there’s somewhere I may need to you meet me. When I call, you need to drop everythin’ and meet me. Is that going to be a problem?”

Brynn looks from V to a space _behind_ V, and Johnny knows that V sees it. V tenses up, her hand grips the empty shot glass a little tighter, and Johnny stops himself from putting his hand on his arm to stop her. Brynn nods, seemingly to the empty space, and then looks back to V. “Not a problem. Thanks again.”

She leaves, and it’s not until they hear the sound of a bike pulling away, that Johnny stands up.

Anger colors his voice, as he points back towards the door, where Brynn just was, “You’re gonna make her _earn_ your help?”

“It’s what Rogue did to us, Johnny, and for good reason.”

“The reason was she didn’t fuckin’ trust you! Thought you were lyin’! You can see the signs; the damn kid is—”

“I can see it, Johnny!” V yells back, her hands slamming down hard on the bar. “And if she’s not fuckin’ lyin’ to our faces, then yeah, I can help her. I have the information that she needs, know how to get her out of this.” Her fingers flex against the glass bar top before she pushes herself away from it and pours another two shots for them. She does hers quickly, he doesn’t touch his. “You know how much it cost me to get those two proxies made. You _know_ the favors we had to call in. Favors we can’t call in now because said parties are _dead_.”

And as if he doesn’t remember what happened, she broadly gestures at Afterlife and the weight of it all.

He puts his hands on the bar, and leans forward, looking at her with narrowed eyes. She stares back, and he knows she’s trying to show she’s angry, but instead she just looks exhausted.

Relenting, he takes the shot and sets the glass back down.

A heavy sigh escapes her lips, she moves from behind the bar, back under the partition, and takes a seat. “I asked her questions. Before you got here. Things that I knew only Jackie would know.” Her fingers tap nervously on the bar, her leg bounces with it.

Instead of leaving, he sits next to her at the bar. Takes out his cigarette case, and she pulls an ash tray towards him. When he lights his, he offers one to her and she accepts. “And?”

She takes his lighter when it’s offered, and she takes a moment to light the cigarette, to take a slow drag from it. “Answered it perfectly. As if someone was feedin’ her the lines, like what you would tell me to say to Rogue.” She taps the cigarette into the tray for a moment. “Johnny, I don’t like this. Thought we destroyed Mikoshi, thought that…” but her voice trembles as she tries to get the words out.

“I know,” he finishes where he can tell she can’t. “Had no reason to think we didn’t.” This wasn’t something they ever actually talked about. What came after once they made it through. The things left unsaid between them that were better left untouched. There’s something akin to guilt that he feels weighing on his chest; nothing about this is sitting right.

From looking at her, the haunted expression on her face, it’s not sitting right with her either. “If I have to get them both proxies, I have to start making the calls now.”

She takes another drag of her cigarette before she rests it in the ash tray between them. The smoke bellows from her lips, matching the smoke from his. “What’s stoppin’ you?”

“Confirmation.”

“How are you gonna get that?” He rests his cigarette in the tray next to hers, watching how her fingers twitch towards the bottle of tequila still between them, but she doesn’t reach for it. He knows their mutual coping mechanism; he doesn’t grab it for her.

“Only person who ever really knew that _you_ were the construct in my head, Johnny,” she says, “Gonna ask Vik to take a look.”

He knows surprise crosses his features because her reaction is to sigh heavily. “You want Vik to tell you that his dead choom is in that girl’s head? The guy is gonna flip out. Don’t want to be there when he wants something to punch.”

“If anyone is gonna know, it’s him,” V runs a hand through her hair, pushing it over one shoulder. Her foot is still anxiously bounding on the ledge of the stool, she keeps biting her lip in worry. “He was also the one who helped us into our proxies. We’re gonna need him.”

“What about Jackie’s mainline?”

“I…” She starts, her voice confident, but then immediately faulters. “I don’t know how I’m gonna tell Misty. I didn’t think that far.”

“Gonna be hard to keep them apart, V. Know that.”

“I know.”

“What then? Get the confirmation…”

“Then I make the calls,” She picks up her cigarette again, she takes another drag. He doesn’t have to be in her head anymore to know she’s not processing his well. “Try to get it done as soon as we can, I don’t want her goin’ through what I did.”

And there it is. The reminder of what they haven’t talked about. The shared trauma that they _should_ have maybe addressed before he went on tour and she threw herself into work.

There’s still a heavy layer of guilt he carries, knowing he was the one who kept killing her slowly with every waking hour. He’s also pretty sure that’s not something he’s ever going to get past.

But he acts as if he doesn’t know what she’s going to say. “Meanin’?”

She doesn’t look at him, she just looks at the wall behind the bar, at the little shrines of the past. Her left hand on the bar shakes a little. “I don’t want her realizin’ she’s gonna to die. That if she’s not careful, she’s just gonna lose more and more of herself, until…” Her fingers curl quickly around the still lit cigarette, and she drops it with a hiss, as she looks at her hand. “Fuck,” and then she has the audacity to look at him and say, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” He grabs a cocktail napkin and gives it to her, she uses it to wipe the ash off her hand, only a small mark left from the cigarette. “It’s fine, V. You don’t need to apologize. Nothin’ to apologize for.”

“No, Johnny, it’s not fine. I don’t know if it will ever _be_ fine. _Fuck_ ,” She finally turns to face him, “I have everythin’ to apologize for. These bodies aren’t our own, and look at us, we’re actin’ as if…” She stops her train of thought immediately. He swallows hard. “Johnny, we’re…I can’t do this right now. Sorry. I can’t talk about this.”

He clears his throat, swallowing down the bile that had started to come up. The distance between them feels like a canyon. He can’t cross that. Not on his own.

“Alright. I’ll get out of your hair.”

He turns to leave, but for a moment her hand touches his shoulder. When he turns back to look at her, she’s biting her lip, and he has to ignore what that look does to him. What it did to him in the past. “Wait. Where are you stayin’?”

Johnny shifts as he stands, runs a hand over his beard, “Ker’s place.”

“He come back too?”

“Nah, still on tour. I came back early.”

That gives him an eyebrow raise from her. He can see the wheels turning in her head, but he can’t hear her thoughts. Fuck, he wishes he could hear her thoughts.

She asks, “Why?”

If she hadn’t heard why, then he won’t tell her. He gives an answer not at all close to what he wants to say, “Wanted to.”

They stand in silence in the middle of Afterlife, distance between the two of them, and his mind keeps rambling about all the things he wants to tell her. That he’s sorry for everything he’s ever done to her. That he came back to Night City to see her again. That he wants to repair whatever this is between them, because she’s the only fucking thing that matters. That he had promised not to fuck up what they had and felt like he had done it anyway by leaving.

Instead, she’s the one who speaks.

“Tomorrow. When I call Brynn, I…Johnny, listen, I want you with me on this. You’re the only one I trust about all this right now.”

“Ain’t gonna let you do this alone, V. Gotta know that.”

She gifts him with a half-smile, the same one that greeted him when he walked in. There’s an awkward dance of what to do next, a handshake or a hug.

What they settle on, as with many things before, is doing nothing.


	3. ; the recluse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I wake alone- and pretend that I am finally home._

V calls him early in the morning, telling him to get to Vik’s clinic. When he gets there, Misty isn’t at the front desk, so he cuts through her shop and into the alley, down into Vik’s shop.

Brynn is already in the ripper chair and hooked up to Vik’s computers. She’s unconscious but breathing steadily; a sign they put her under on purpose. V is pacing back and forth, biting her thumb. He steps down into the basement clinic, his boots hitting the floor; Vik looks up from the computer and notices him.

“Hey, what—” Johnny begins to ask, but the sentences doesn’t get to be finished.

Instead, he’s treated to Vik’s fist slamming into his face, knocking him to the ground. Vik’s other hand grabbing him by the shirt to lift him up and punch again, but Johnny gets to his feet and dodges out of the way. Vik’s hand is still grabbing onto the front of his shirt, and Johnny is purely on the defensive as he tries to get out of the ex-boxer’s grasp.

“You fucking shit, this is your fucking fault!” Vik’s voice is filled with bitterness and anger as he brings his hand back to slam his fist int Johnny’s face again.

V’s hand catches Vik’s fist. Her fingers grip around his fist, “ _Don’t_ ,” she warns.

Vik steps back, his grip loosening on Johnny’s shirt finally and stares at V. “This shit would have never fuckin’ happened if you and Jackie didn’t get his—”

“We didn’t know what the biochip had on it when we were stealin’, Vik! And this shit right now isn’t any more Johnny’s fault than it is _mine_. Jackie died _because_ of me in ‘Saka Tower, got turned into a fuckin’ engram because of _me_ , so _fuck off_.” V shoves her hands against Vik’s chest, pushing him further back.

Johnny knows this dance well. She wants a fight. She doesn’t want to deal with what is burning her brain up, and fighting would temperately solve it. He knows it well because he’s usually the same. Part of why they had always run so hot before, but not the reason things were so cold now.

Instead, he just feels his face to make sure it’s not going to swell. When Vik throws him an ice pack, he accepts it without a word or a sneer, despite wanting to retaliate. Not the time. Not the place.

Vik and V stare at each other for a long time, V’s hands are in fists at her side. Vik softens first, and pulls V into his arms, and it’s then that she loses the tough woman exterior and hugs Vik in return. Johnny looks away from them, looks to Brynn in the chair, who has started to stir awake.

“Hey, she’s wakin’ up,” he breaks the silence, as Vik returns to Brynn’s side, and V goes over to Johnny’s side. She stands next to him with her arms crossed, her foot tapping nervously on the floor. He nudges his arm against hers, and for a moment, they share a look of understanding.

Before the look on her face changes as she walks over to Brynn.

“V? Did it work, did you get what you needed?” Brynn asks, slowly sitting up as she looks at V. Vik has already moved away, returned to his usual seat, and V takes Brynn’s hand into hers.

“We did. And you were telling the truth, you have someone in your head that I…knew very well.”

It feels uncomfortable, to be witnessing this conversation, but he also doesn’t feel right in leaving. He leans against the wall, ice pack on his cheek, other hand in his pocket, as he listens.

V is careful to pick her words, careful how she talks to Brynn, “Is he here now?”

Brynn nods, and she gestures her hand towards Johnny. “He’s pacing around him,” she points, and Johnny immediately feels on edge. Not because Jackie knows who he is, or what him and V went through, but he knows what Jackie means to V.

V looks behind her, as if she expects to see Jackie walking among them, but her eyes only fall on Johnny. She turns back to Brynn, “Alright. Let Vik do some last-minute scans of you, make sure everything is up to date on your chrome. I’ll pay for anything you want upgraded. I’ll be in touch.”

She doesn’t give Brynn a chance to speak, or ask any questions, she turns and storms out of Vik’s clinic, storming right past Johnny. He pushes off the wall and follows her into the alley, grabbing onto her arm as she tries to keep walking.

“The fuck are you doin’? That kid is scared in there and—”

V turns around so quickly, pulling her arm out of his grasp, and she looks at him with fire and brimstone. It forces him to take a step back, hands up in a momentary placating manner but it isn’t going to help.

He’s already seen the spark to set off the fire, and she’s going to explode.

“And _what_ , Johnny? She has it _made_ right now,” V hisses back, a venom that he doesn’t expect, but has no problem matching. “Yeah, sure, she’s fuckin’ dyin’ like I was, but she already has a damn solution! She doesn’t have to wait months; she doesn’t have to whore herself out to every fuckin’ fixer in Night City before the _Queen_ dare speak to her!” V gestures to herself broadly, and throws her hands in the air, “Because the new Queen already is helping! Brynn has _no idea_ how lucky she has it right now.”

The pain and anger in her voice bleeds together, a sound so familiar that he wonders if his temper bled over to her from before. His eyebrows furrow, looking at her incredulously, “Whoa, nothin’ about this situation is luck, V, don’t fuckin’ start with that. That ain’t fair to you. Where the fuck is this coming from?”

He takes a step towards her.

She takes a step back.

“I hate this. I fuckin’ _hate_ this and all I keep thinking about is how fuckin’ different this would all be if I had been stuck with Jackie instead of _you_.”

The words punch harder than Vik does, the pain immediately cutting to the wick. The rational side of him, the one more formed because of her, tells him she’s lashing out because she’s scared. The irrational side tells him to keep pushing her. So, he does. “Well, you fuckin’ were stuck with me and you can’t change the past, so why fuckin’ bitch about it?”

Her laugh is bitter and brutal, venomous to his ears, “Oh, that’s rich, coming from the asshole who only bitched about the past! Nothing you did mattered, Johnny. Nothing _I_ did mattered,” She steps forward and jabs a finger into his chest before pulling away, “Only thing we have to our names are the piles of bodies under our feet.”

“Do you think I fuckin’ like that? Don’t think that—” The anger is building, they’re now just screaming at each other in the alley outside of Misty’s and Vik’s, and not even the regulars are sticking around to see the show. A free ticket that no one in their right mind wants in this city.

“You’re right, Johnny, you don’t fuckin’ think! You _never_ do!”

He went for a deep cut, getting the knife in, twisting, “Know who you sound like? You sound like Rogue, and you want to fuckin’ become her now?”

But her reply is worse, her tone gets colder. “Maybe I should, at least she knew when to fuckin’ give up hope on you.”

“Wow.” It feels like all the air has been punched out of him and gone is the feeling of thinking they might still have a friendship they could repair. The night before in Afterlife, the awkward conversation, it was just niceties covering up the ugly truth they both refused to tell each other. “Fuck you.”

“Fuck you too, Johnny. Maybe you should have stayed on tour with Kerry.”

“Maybe I fuckin’ should have. But _unlike_ you, want to help this kid out.”

That gets her to soften, her features immediately fall, and she steps forward. “Wait, no, I want to hel—"

“Sure, you do, V. Walkin’ picture of hospitality,” he gestured to her, her posture, how she held herself. He scoffed, “Stayin’ around while we help her through this shit, but don’t expect me to stick around after.”

He glares at her, expects her to scream at him, to put him firmly in his place again.

Instead, she just sounds detached. The emotions that play on her face move so fast that he can’t figure out what they are. Doesn’t want to let himself figure them out. “Fine.”

V turns on her heels and heads out of the alley, leaving Johnny alone screaming after her, always wanting the last word. “Fine!”

As she left, he let out a frustrated scream in the alley, kicking the nearest dumpster. This wasn’t what he had come back to Night City for. This wasn’t what he wanted.

“Mr. Silverhand?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” He flinched at that, eyebrow raising as he turned around to see Brynn standing in front of him, her hands in her jacket pockets. “Hey. You okay?”

She nods, “Yeah, are you?”

He swallows hard, “Yeah. Also don’t…Johnny is fine, alright?”

“Got it. Hey, you don’t…happen to have a car, do you? V was my ride here.”

_Of course_. He nodded, frustratingly running a hand through his hair, “Yeah. I’ll drive you back to your place. Where are you at?”

“Megabuilding H10, you know it?”

First, she has an engram of Jackie, now the kid lives in V’s old building. Was the universe just fucking with them now? “Mmh, I know it. Come on, not far.”

It’s uncomfortable in the car, he turns the music up so he doesn’t have to talk to her, and she spends the time staring out the window. When he parks in front of the old building V used to live in, it almost feels like he can see V walking up the stairs with him after a bad gig. Or both laughing, drunk off their asses, trying not to fall down before they got to her apartment. The good, the bad, the ugly, all playing out as memory fragments in front of him he just can’t reach anymore.

“Thanks for the ride, Johnny,” Brynn says with a smile. She gets out of his Porsche and shuts the door. His hands grip the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. He should just leave. Get out of the city, let V deal with this, and just fuck off.

Instead, he sighs heavily and groans, swearing under his breath. He turns the car off, getting out. “Brynn, wait.” He meets her before she gets to the stairs to the building. “How old are you?”

“21, why?”

He feels a panic at that, someone so young dealing this wasn’t a good sign. At least him and V were closer in age, well into their thirties when they collided. Brynn? She wasn’t so lucky. Didn’t deserve her life to be changed like it was. “Was just wondering. Did Vik and Misty give you pills to help with uh…your situation?”

“Yeah. Omega Blockers and—”

“—pseudoendotrizine,” he blurts it out before she finishes before he remembers to catch himself. For whatever reason, V hadn’t told Brynn what was going on, how closely the two of them knew of their situation. He needed to keep his mouth shut, for as long as V kept hers shut.

She blinks a few times, surprised, “How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess,” he shrugs.

He watches as Brynn looks to her left, where to Johnny there is nothing but a noodle stand. But how Brynn looks, how she looks like she’s listening to someone, he knows she’s seeing Jackie. She nods, and then looks back to him. “Alright, well thank you.”

“Yeah.”

He waits for her to head back up the stairs, looking every bit like the sort of a person who is talking to nothing but air, clearly not getting the hang of speaking to Jackie inside her head yet.

But she doesn’t go just yet. “Johnny, can I ask you something? Why are you helping me?”

“Because V asked me to.”

“But…why?”

He swallows hard because he knows that maybe Jackie is feeding her the questions. That Jackie needs the answers more than Brynn does. He’s not someone that Jackie knows, he’s a potential threat. “See you around.” A non-committal answer, true to how he always is, doing nothing when he could have done _something_.

There is no room for her to ask him anything else, as he gets back into his car and drives off.


	4. ; never is a promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _You'll say you'd never give up seeing eye to eye_   
>  _But "never" is a promise_   
>  _and you can't afford to lie_

Kerry’s place is like a museum. A museum of lots of shitty tasteless art, graffiti everywhere, and that damn painting of him naked that Johnny swears follows him around the room.

He hates it. Kerry _knows_ he hates it, but it’s not Johnny’s place, so he can’t bitch. He does it anyway, of course, because if there wasn’t anything for him to complain about, he just wouldn’t be _him._ It doesn’t help that he hates this is the only place in the city he feels comfortable staying in.

But as he stands in the living room, looking up at that damn portrait of Kerry, the annoyance on Johnny’s face is clear. The thing must go. Or at least get hidden somewhere.

There are far better things that Johnny should be doing, he knows this. But as he somehow finds a ladder, somehow finds a sheet big enough to place over it, he acknowledges that at least it’s distracting him from how pissed off he is.

Once the sheet is covering the painting, he leans back on the ladder to admire his handiwork, until he slips off the ladder and falls onto his back. The sheet falls off the painting and onto of him, he groans out in annoyance. Because now he’s no longer distracted about how angry he is, now he’s angrier and his back hurts. Somehow, Kerry’s fucking painting looks like it’s laughing at him.

_I keep thinkin’ about is how fuckin’ different this would all be if I had been stuck with Jackie instead of you._

Her voice shooting through his head caused him to sit up with a jolt, shove the fallen sheet off him and to the side, quickly getting to his feet. He wants to remind himself that she doesn’t mean that. That she didn’t mean it, that this whole situation is just fucked up. Just another fucked up situation for them to deal with.

But the pain in his chest tells him otherwise, and he just keeps pacing around Kerry’s house. Every now and then deciding to break some of his expensive art, because it wasn’t like Kerry couldn’t just replace the damn things. Fuck, he had spray painted dicks on most of them.

Breaking shit wasn’t helping, because the second his mind cleared, V’s voice came right back into his head. But it was different this time. Little things she had said to him before they were separated. The night they had spent sleeping side by side the first night they were cleared from Vik’s. Then his thoughts quickly went into all the things he didn’t say, things he felt he couldn’t say.

How angry she was, in the alley, wishing that she had been stuck with Jackie’s engram instead of his. Even if it would have never been possible, even if the timeline would have never worked.

In her place, if he had the chance of seeing his friend he had lost in Mexico, he’d choose that. If he had lost Kerry, and this was the only chance to get him back? He’d be angry too. But he was a different man once he had left the war. Hell, he was a different man now. If he ran into someone who had died, to only come back now and—

\---oh.

Suddenly, everything had made a lot more sense. Once more, if he had paid attention to how she was speaking, how she was acting – it was easier when he could hear her thoughts. It was easier when he didn’t have to guess at human emotion, because with both of them they were filled with it, sometimes too much of it.

Having Jackie back for her, was equal to how Kerry reacted knowing he was back, and he was a damn idiot for not seeing it.

The anger quickly subsided, cursing himself for being an idiot, and pacing around breaking things in Kerry’s home turned into trying to find somewhere to sleep.

Johnny found himself wandering towards the guest room, digging through his suitcase to change into something slightly more comfortable, and allowed himself to flop down on the bed. Hands resting on his chest, closing his eyes.

_She arches up against his fingertips, moaning out his name so blissfully, proclamations of love falling from her…_

Immediately he opened his eyes again and stared at the ceiling. That hadn’t happened. Just a fantasy of something that he knew wouldn’t happen; they had gone this long without anything. He had never told her anything about what he felt for her, and he could never read that part of her closely; never wanted to. But there had been no doubt that he would give up his life for hers. There had never been a doubt that she would do the same.

Once he was separate from her, and across the damn country from her, it was harder and harder to function without her. She was who he was tethered to; and he felt the pull on the line for him to go back to Night City. He hadn’t expected this though.

Slowly, he tried to close his eyes again.

_She curls up in his arms, in her bed that isn’t quite big enough for the two of them. She stretches against him, sighs happily as she falls asleep against his chest. He allows himself a moment of weakness, and presses a kiss to her hair, wrapping his arms tightly around her to…_

His eyes opened again, following with a heavy sigh. That _had_ happened. Just a way to allow himself a moment of thinking that could be what he had in his life before they separated for six months. A muttered _“Fuck,_ ” from his lips as he realized he wouldn’t be sleeping tonight, as he pushed himself to sit up and search for his cigarettes.

Sleeping in Kerry’s giant fucking mansion alone wasn’t going to cut it. He could go and just sleep in his car, sure it’d be cramped, but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t done that before. Cigarettes found, he pushed himself up and off the bed, moving to head out of the guest room.

His holo going off interrupted that.

The contact photo of V showed up, a dumb photo of the two of them she demanded they take; both flipping off the camera. A weight fell and rested on his chest, and he debated not answering it.

But he wanted to resolve things between them, make her realize that he was going to be here for her, for Jackie and Brynn. That he wasn’t looking to go anywhere again any time soon.

Truths that he wasn’t quite good at admitting to himself, but he didn’t want to cut and run out on V. Not again.

Before answering, he cleared his throat, before her video came into view. “V?”

“Hey,” Her voice was exhausted, softer than the last time they spoke. She ran a hand over her face, and sighed, “I…Johnny, I’m sorry.”

His eyebrow raised, “You’re apologizin’? For what?”

“Snappin’ at you, sayin’ what I did, I…I didn’t mean it.” Her voice is colored with regret and he hates how it sounds. He hates that he pulled that emotion from her, even if she had every right to react how she had.

He had apparently fallen silent a little too long, as she asked again, “Johnny?”

“Can understand if you did. This ain’t an easy situation, V.” Johnny rubbed at his eyes, a yawn coming that he covered, though not successfully enough. On the other end, V cursed under her breath.

“Oh, fuck, I just realized the time, did I wake you?”

“No. Was awake.” Not a lie. There wasn’t going to be a chance he could sleep anyway; if his mind continued to play tricks on him how it was. It would be no different than any other sleepless night while on tour, eventually causing him to just survive on a concoction of coffee and cigarettes. Even Kerry had gotten sick of it.

On her side, V’s lip twist and she clears her throat, as if she’s about to ask him something difficult. “Think you could come to Afterlife? I wanna clear the air between us. I’ll even make coffee how you like it.” She ends the last part with a smirk, and a small wink. He does not hide the grin that comes over his face.

“Hard to fuck up black coffee, V.”

“You already forget when I burned it?” She teased lightly.

Laughing. This was good, it was better than where they had left it before. “Don’t burn it then. See you in ten.”

Her own laughter is the last thing he hears before she hangs up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have been told that i apparently really hate kerry’s art. _i don't!!_ i, like johnny, just really enjoy smashing expensive things :D 
> 
> also another fun fact, the title of this chapter was originally the title of this story!


End file.
